Heya,

Would like to start posting my development progress and some of my thoughts.

Over the weekend, I am very happy to say that the following systems for Frostfall 3.0 were written and are now completely functional:

Wetness system
Heat Source system
Compatibility system

These were the easiest to stand up since the fewest number of changes needed to happen to these systems. They're also not that complex.

The following systems remain to be written:
Clothing system (started on this)
Exposure system
Climate system
Location system
Rescue system

Frostfall 3.0 is written in a service-oriented way, with each system being completely independent of the others. They interact with each other primarily using FrostUtil, which also serves as a public interface for other modders to interact with Frostfall as well.

I verified that the Wetness system can talk to the Heat Source system ("should I start drying off quickly now?" ) and the Campfire shelter system ("Am I under shelter? Should I stop getting wet in the rain?" ). And so on. All of that seems to be communicating as I expected. I'm also seeing the loops for each of these systems only taking about 0.1 - 0.3 seconds to run, compared to the 2 - 5 seconds it currently takes Frostfall's main script to run, so that bodes well for the performance. And the time doesn't seem to be increasing as I add new systems, so they seem to be isolated pretty well. I'll continue to monitor the performance to ensure that the entire framework keeps performing much better than what is released today.

Beyond that I started in on the redesign of the exposure system. Since Frostfall 3.0 will require SKSE and SkyUI, and since PapyrusUtil is available, I can do some fun things by default that weren't possible before. Expect to see some of these changes:

• Exposure Resistance, as a mechanic, will go away.
• Exposure Protection remains, but the name might change.
• Rain Protection (name TBD) may become a distinct value that every armor has.
• The WEAR system, as a distinct and optional feature, will instead become the new default (and only) system.
• Instead of a "limited", "standard", and "full" distinction for armor, each armor piece will simply have a listed Exposure Protection rating, similar to an armor rating. You will just look at the number instead.
• Exposure and Rain Protection will hopefully be displayed on the armor's item card in your inventory, just like Armor Rating.
• All of your exposure protection settings for equipment will be exported as part of your Settings Profile. Once you set your armor up the way you like (including mod-added armor), you can keep those changes across all of your saves and playthroughs without any reconfiguration.
• A new, streamlined page on the MCM will allow you to set the protection values of your worn gear quickly and easily.
• New debuffs will occur if not wearing something in the hands, feet, body, or head slot. This encourages continuing to wear something in the main slots even though Exposure Resistance is going away.
• Now that Exposure Protection is just a number, that number can now be 0 for some gear, offering no protection.
• Being wet will now offer a Dragon's Dogma-esque invulnerability to a single fire attack, but expose you to weakness to shock and frost. Might make battles in the rain more interesting.
• NPCs and your opponents will also get wet, so this can affect both sides of the fight. Will be compatible with Wet and Cold.
• NPCs and your opponents will also suffer from exposure (a very reduced, simplified version).
• Also, let's just say it. Cloaks from most cloak mods in Skyrim (the ones in Frostfall included) are a bit low-rent looking. They're often not very aesthetically pleasing. This is nobody's fault, this is just the system we have to work with and everyone has done the best they can. I will continue to offer support for them but I will also be offering other ways to get the same bonuses.

The theme and goal here is refine, refine, refine. Make everything simpler, easier to understand, fun, and more straight-forward.

I hope these changes bring more clarity, ease of use, and flexibility to the system. Perhaps those wearing full Leather Armor and a hood don't need to wear a cloak and still have great rain protection, or perhaps you decide to mix and match your gear to get the balance of armor, exposure, and rain protection that you're looking for. And maybe Dragonbone can have a slightly higher or lower protection value than Ebony or Daedric, since things aren't constrained into fitting into one of 3 categories any longer.

Hmmm, interesting. I'm curious, why "Exposure Resistance, as a mechanic, will go away."?

While the range of exposure resistance that exists for any given character from the time they are Wayfarer 10 to Wayfarer 100 _might_ be a bit on the unrealistic side . . . the real life fact is: some people DO have much more resistance than others. Most of that has to do with the distribution of fat on the body, the proportionality of the limbs and the trunk, and possibly with specific organization of the nervous system. Not sure how much of the total observed variability in human "exposure resistance" is explained by habituation or training, but I wouldn't be surprised if it is a non-trivial proportion. The flexibility and responsiveness of the adrenal axis (and other hormonal axes) in response to cold might well account for a good amount of increased resistance to cold, and circulatory variables might also have an effect.

On top of that, Skyrim is a FANTASY game, and some of these skills and perks are decidedly "magical" and unrealistic, so one need only a bit of a nod to the realities of biology, eh!?

So all that said: while the existing values in Frostfall might deserve tweaking, I'll be a bit disappointed to see the graduated "levelling up" system for increased exposure resistance gone completely from the mod.

The one thing I'd really like to see you add to Frostfall is, instead of simply specifying in MCM or in setup how much exposure resistance is afforded by specific garments, have a system wherein each garment (or class of garments) has a standard min-max range, and then in crafting allow players to enhance garments to afford better exposure resistance. This would of course require materials (furs and pelts) and could even be accessorized with spells, enchantments, etc. Make it challenging and interesting to take your favorite enchanted Scaled Armor set and turn it into the ideal cold weather gear with enchanted fur linings, that sort of thing.

Nice! Love the implementation of the numeral protection system and integration into MCM!^^

Actually conducting electricity while wet is awesome.

NPC wet and cold is huge beyond belief... my main strive is for equality with what my pc and npc can do and are effected by and Frostfall was a necessary but blatant caveat in that. Amazing:D

Good luck to ye, very much looking forward to this!

Just to make sure we're talking about the same things since I feel like we might both be going off of incomplete information:

• What I'm talking about is not a thematic or feel change to Frostfall. It should play and feel the same. This is a change purely from the mechanics side to make things clearer to the player what's going on, and possibly offer new flexibility that wasn't present before.

• There are two main exposure "defense" mechanics: Exposure Protection and Exposure Resistance. Exposure Resistance scales with the amount of Exposure Protection you have, and as such, it's complicated. Most users I talk to don't really understand how these mechanics work other than "more is better". Resistance comes from a variety of sources (the Conditioning benefit that comes with level, torches, soups, cloaks, etc)

• The entire reason I developed Exposure Resistance in the first place was to discourage walking around naked, because of how the math works out. This is a case of the system mechanics bleeding into the user's experience, which I think is bad. With a purely Exposure Protection-based system, the thinking was that the player might get their Protection from other sources than equipment, making gear choice uninteresting or obsolete and possibly encourage unimmersive (but valid under the system) behavior, like jucing up on soups and carrying a torch and running into a snowstorm naked. Exposure Resistance has almost no other purpose currently as a mechanic other than to discourage this kind of behavior. Exposure Resistance basically "doesn't work" under the current system unless your gear needs have been fulfilled. I've come to think that this was wrongheaded of me and I could discourage walking around naked via other means. So this mechanic is now in a position of needing to justify itself and currently (this might change next week or even this evening) but I don't see why I would need it now.

• Regarding your first comment ("While the range of exposure resistance that exists for any given character..."), there is already a Conditioning perk that takes into account your level, granting some benefit. I wouldn't get rid of this. I would also not get rid of the Frost Resistance bonus to your exposure rate. Frostfall 3.0 will probably introduce other new perks as well. My anticipation is that those ideas will fold into the Exposure Protection point-based system instead and not Resistance.

• Regarding your other comment ("I'll be a bit disappointed to see the graduated "levelling up" system for increased exposure resistance gone completely from the mod."), that was never my intention and I apologize if I alluded to that. If anything I want the new system to feel like it has MORE growth and MORE of an overall gameplay arc.

• Regarding "The one thing I'd really like to see you add to Frostfall is, instead of simply specifying in MCM or in setup how much exposure resistance is afforded by specific garments, have a system wherein each garment (or class of garments) has a standard min-max range, and then in crafting allow players to enhance garments to afford better exposure resistance.", this is something I've thought a lot about over the years but the thing that's always stopped me is that the player shouldn't have to pour resources into "fixing" their gear to be what they thought it should have been in the first place. "What, this is this huge bulky fur armor from Mod XYZ, why is it only standard?" Granted, at the time, this was in support of the existing WEAR system and its 3 categories. Since things might be moving to a more flexible point-based approach, maybe something like this does make more sense. You can set things the way you want them standard in the MCM, but then you can layer on some upgrades on top of that. Something to think about.